


The Companion

by Eliahst (EPaXLeo)



Series: Lonely With The Lights Off [2]
Category: Original Work
Genre: Annoying Skype Conversations, Dead People, Gen, POV Second Person, Pre-asexual Relationship
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-04-08
Updated: 2013-04-08
Packaged: 2017-12-07 21:07:01
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,500
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/753082
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/EPaXLeo/pseuds/Eliahst
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>You're almost sure you're losing your mind. Seeing dead people in your bathroom is a good sign of that, right?</p>
            </blockquote>





	The Companion

You wake up early.  
  
Not that this is a surprise at all to you, since you've gotten up early every day for seven months. That time is a pretty rough estimate of course, given that you've only owned an alarm clock for three months, but  nightmares started way before that.  
  
Now, sometimes you ask yourself why you set your alarm so early even with the nightmares cutting into your sleep. The answer you usually give, as you lie to your reflection every morning, is that it wakes you up before the dreams can go south. Your reflection doesn't believe you, but that's okay because you don't either.  
  
You're tucking the towel into a knot around your waist as you get out of the shower, but the translucent man sitting on your toilet tells you it doesn't matter. He's been watching you through your whole shower and it's not like your 'shriveled flesh' is gonna do anything by being on display aside from traumatize anybody unlucky enough to catch a glimpse.  
  
You stare through him as your sleep-clogged brain tries to figure out how a man with no eyes is able to watch anything.  
  
He evaporates into bloody steam and disperses into the air before you can ask that question. Whatever. It's not like he won't be back tomorrow.  
  
See, the problem with these nightmares and hallucinations is that, while they're antagonistic as a basic detail, they're also short-lived. The 'ghosts' as you've been calling them only stay in your awareness for a total of, maybe, fifty seconds, and the nightmares burst out of existence with the same ferocity with which they come into being.  
  
That's the part that's getting to you. If this was genuine supernatural taunting, you think it would be more of a spectacle. And if it was a psychological problem, it would be more consistent. After all, those are the only two options that make any sense, with the latter option being far more likely.  
  
You have no idea how absolutely, completely, fucking wrong you are.  
  
\------------  
  
This ongoing issue is the reason you have started working from home. Before this started, you wrote a help column for your local newspaper. Not romance, or school help, just a general advice column intended for the average moron who writes into that kind of thing. Occasionally, you would get stuck in the editor's office, assisting him through his constant computer troubles. You weren't really good at that either. You were, however, entertaining enough in your cynical responses in your column that they kept you on.  
  
When the nightmares started, you asked if there was anyway you could work from home.  
  
The option they gave was for you to stay home and work over the phone with the new website designed they had recently hired, some arrogant-sounding college-fresh kid named Stephan,  to get The Brightside News a good online presence.  
  
You have never designed anything more complex than a high school poster, and you failed that project, but at least you don't have to explain to anyone that the reason you aren't listening to them is because a bisected hula girl  is dancing in the water cooler. Over the phone, you can have as many hallucinations as you want, and for the most part the guy on the other end will just think you're talking to someone else.  
  
This _would_ be the case, except Stephan refuses to do any calls over an actual phone. Every time he wants to tell to something or get your approval because, bless his stupid heart, he's just a kid on his first job who wants to do well, he sends you a text message telling to to get on Skype.  
  
God, do you hate Skype.  
  
It's not that you have anything against the software, it's just that your computer is almost old enough to legally drive a car and the lag is so bad that you might as well be making a phone call from the middle of a tunnel, inside the Grand Canyon, the quality is so bad. He says it's because he wants to make a visual impression on the people he's working for, despite the fact that you've told him several times that you're both working for the same people, and since you're working in your pajamas with a chipped mug full of booze there's no reason he can't just make a phone call.  
  
Of course, Stephan had made a sheepish, yet admonishing, noise at the mention of, oh no, _drinking on the job_. You don't really care what he does, so long as he doesn't go tattling to your bosses. You're pretty sure he's not going to do anything. Gotta love that fear of authority in college kids.  
  
But the main reason you hate Skype is because, even though the connection is goddawful, the little punk can see you freeze up when one of your hallucinations start.  
  
Granted, most of the time, the ghosts or whatever they are have not been between you and your webcam, so you could explain it as your cat, one of which you do not own, was distracting you. This time, you're trying to explain to Stephan that no, comic sans is not an appealing font, when a girl holding her own head in her lap appears on your computer desk. Being used to this, you prepare to state right through her head and continue the call, but Stephan has other plans.  
  
The first of which is to apparently scream bloody murder right into the microphone.  
  
You rip your headphones off and throw them to the floor, grunting again the pain in your eardrums, and again when the wire whips across your face as it's ripped out of the jack.  
  
The severed head in the little girl's lap  roll its eyes at your pained flailing, but you have bigger problems to deal with. Stephan's blurry screen is going even glitchier as the kid's panicked shrieks fall out of your speakers, "Evan, what the hell! What the fuck is going on!? What the fuck did that kid come fro--WHERE'S ITS FUCKING HEAD!?"  
  
The kid's head snarls, like a damn rabid dog, and then fizzles out of being without a sound, or at least without any sounds you can hear over Stephan losing his shit.  
  
You mash the mute button on your keyboard. You don't need to listen to him freak ou--wait.  
  
The lack of good sleep has obviously been getting to you because it takes you all the way from the computer chair to the bathroom, located on the other side of your apartment, before it hits you that Stephan had seen the little girl. Which means you aren't losing your mind, at least not completely.  
  
You sprint back across your house, but the screen is empty and the call ended. There is a note in the bottom of the message screen waiting for you, typed in all caps.  
  
S.Merrin: WHAT THE SHIT  
S.Merrin: EVAN  
S.Merrin: EVAN ARE YOU OKAY  
S.Merrin: WHAT THE HELL WAS THAT  
S.Merrin: FUCK FUCK FUCK SHIT  
S.Merrin: fuck i'm gonna get the police and come over as fast as i can try not to die before i get the there shit shit shit fuck please dont die  
  
You're staring, dumbfounded, at the screen as reality finally cracks its way into your skill. The ghosts or demons or ghouls were not in your head. The rotting corpses and flayed bodies that you do casually greeted as features of your collapsing mind were real, physical beings gravitating toward you. And almost every single one was hostile in some way. What if they were just waiting? Sitting by patiently for you to catch wise just to rip you to bloody horrible chunks strewn across your shitty house.  
  
And you never even fucking noticed.  
  
"Oh God. Oh my God, how the fuck--" Your stuttered words become a rough scream at the sudden reappearance of the beheaded girl. You grope for something, anything, to protect yourself, and you throw it straight at her. The headphones go sailing through her, but you do manage to have one effect. You surprise her enough that she drops her head, and you scream like a five-year-old girl when it comes rolling at you.  
  
You spring up into the air, land back on your computer chair, and topple it with a loud crash. It appends you, and spills you back at the little girl's feet. The head is about two inches from yours and oh God you're freaking out. And oh fuck it's talking  
  
"I knew you were too laid back. You don't deserve this."  
  
"You're damn right I don't deserve this. Now please, for love of fucking fuck please don't eat me."  
  
She answers your plea by kicking her severed head directly into your face. You scream like a five year old and back-pedal so hard you slam the back of your skull into the edge of your desk, and knock yourself out.

**Author's Note:**

> Warning: I still have no idea where I'm taking this. I also might be lying about that.


End file.
